A family of witches

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An 8 year old who condemns his own mother to execution in 1582: New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday, who researches Renaissance literature at Newcastle University, has been reading witch trial records from Elizabethan and Jacobean England to explore how they depict single mothers. And she finds chilling echoes of their language in newspaper articles in our own times.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Transcript

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0:00.0	Can I just say?
0:01.5	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast.
0:04.0	It's such a wonderful listen.
0:05.6	So nice.
0:06.5	There are loads more like it on BBC sounds.
0:08.8	Different paces, different heights.
0:10.6	The roof is buckling.
0:11.9	Where you can also listen to live sports commentary.
0:14.2	It's right foot goes for goal.
0:16.7	And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories.
0:21.7	The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession.
0:25.2	And she's had to live with that.
0:26.8	So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion.
0:29.7	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.7	Sort of expecting that every week now.
0:35.8	BBC Sounds, music, Radio, podcasts.
0:40.4	I'm Emma Whipday, one of the BBC Radio 3 Arts and Humanities Research Council
0:45.8	New Generation Thinkers, and in this episode of the essay, I'll be talking about how
0:50.7	single mothers got caught up in the frenzy of the English witch trials.
0:56.0	Thomas is eight years old. He stands in a courtroom to accuse a woman of witchcraft.
1:03.0	He says he has watched her feed her cats, with bread and milk and with her own blood.
1:09.2	This is a sign of a witch,
	...

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